Muay Thai vs JJJ?

Hey guys,

new member, long time lurker... but had to ask an opinion of the masses. Forgive me if this is the wrong forum. Wanted to pick up a second art thats effective and would get me in shape before i ship to basic.

I ended up finding a place finally within driving distance and also within my low funds... My choices were between TKD (obvious no) Muay Thai (really interesting) and Japanese Ju Jitsu (fairly awesome also). I have not yet gotten to watch the classes but am planning to try em both... only iffy part is that it is within a TKD studio?

Would love some opinions on the matter, which should i lean towards? Is it even worth looking at? Thanks everyone for the help!

This belongs in the newb forum. What I know about JJJ is that it can be fairly hit-or-miss in terms of quality. Some schools focus their time practicing compliant wrist locks, while others train in a manner similar to MMA fighters.

QFT. I took japanese jujutsu for two years and honestly it was a very sad experience for me. I started by learning armbars, ude garames, ect. I learned all these moves, but never learned to move. Then as there were less experienced people and more "self defense" oriented students it became compliant wrist locks. The guy I took it from also turned out to be a snake oil salesman, so there's that. But JJJ if practiced with aliveness has merit.

As for mauy thai, even that can get perverted. There is a thread going on where a guy who swears he studies t3h r34l muay thai (muay boran) has the deadly.

With Muay Thai, you do have to kind of watch out for the TKD/Krotty guys who decided to swap their PJs for short-shorts in order to cash in on current trends.

Easiest way to get an idea of the quality of an MT place is to check out their fight team. Even if you have no intention of competing yourself it lets you know if they are authentic or not. They don't necessarily need to be winning everything - though obviously it's a plus if they are - but there should be evidence that they interact regularly with other MT clubs and not operating outside the pale.

Find out if the JJJ club practices with aliveness and if they do Sport Jujitsu. It's not perfect, particularly with the level of striking, but it can teach you fairly decent Judo/groundwork. I mean, my MMA coach's background is in JJJ, and he used to win all their groundfighting comps before transitioning into MMA. You want a club like that. However often JJJ schools will only let higher grades do that, whereas a legitimate Muay Thai place will have you sparring fairly quickly.